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Kale and Panade

April 25, 2010 by Vanessa 1 Comment

I have decided that kale is one of my new favorite veggies and definitely my favorite green. Kale is hearty and strong. It stays good for a long time and it doesn’t wilt easily. I like it, I like it a lot.

Related, I had a ton of random veggies leftover that I didn’t know what to do with until I found this absolutely fool-proof recipe for a Panade. The steps are easy and it came out perfect and tasty. Into mine went beet greens, bok choy, kale, dandelion greens, carrots, corn, yellow squash, kohlrabi, sausage, onion, garlic, and parmesan cheese. We had a ton of old leftover bread. I didn’t even have to use fancy bakery bread, just a bunch of old regular sliced Mrs. Bairds bread.

Give it a try. It’s a great way to get rid of leftovers.

Catholic Schools and Gay Parents

April 23, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image by thuynw_sp08 via Flickr

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while now. Should Catholic schools allow children with gay parents to attend? I believe, yes. And I believe Jesus would say the same thing. Gay adoption is a whole other issue but if a gay couple comes to a Catholic school and wants to enroll their children, it should be allowed.

Jesus did not say, “Let the children only with perfect parents come to me”.

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver issued a statement explaining the general policy of the archdiocese. “If parents don’t
respect the beliefs of the church, or live in a manner that openly
rejects those beliefs, then partnering with those parents becomes very
difficult, if not impossible.”

So according to that statement, what other children are we going to reject based on the lives of their parents?
Single, never married mothers?
Divorced and remarried with first marriage never annulled parents?
Parents that use birth control?
Parents of another faith tradition?

The list could be endless. And, for that matter, should we start to reject kids that openly reject the beliefs of the Church? What if a student believes that abortion is ok? What if students are having sex? What if a student is homosexual (not that being homosexual is a sin)? Should we bar them from attending Catholic schools, too?

The purpose of Catholic education is to teach the Faith, teach love for God and neighbor, and to teach ethical decisions making when they are out in the world. This is something that every child has the right to receive if the parents want them to.

Obviously a gay couple wanting to send their child to a Catholic school would know the position of the Church regarding homosexual acts and as long as that couple is ok with the fact that the child would be taught this unapologetically, then I see no problem in the child’s attendance.

I read a really interesting article through Commonweal’s blog about why a lesbian couple wanted to send their adopted children to Catholic school. They adopted 2 boys from Africa and stated that they flourished under the loving environment of the Catholic school with its small student to teacher ratio and “saints for teachers”.

Can we really turn away children that have the potential to flourish in a Catholic school environment solely on the merit of their homelife?

If I Knew Then What I Know Now

April 19, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image by genibee via Flickr

I know it seems like a common sense statement but I am continually amazed how the more big life events I experience the more I can relate to others. Getting engaged, getting married, being a teacher, having a baby, being a mom, etc. As these things happen, I feel like I understand more of life. This also means that as I learn more, the more I cringe when I think about things I’ve done that were insensitive and un-understanding.

When I worked at a women’s homeless shelter where we lived with undocumented women and children we always had a few pregnant women staying with us. When they would go into labor we would take them to the emergency room, make sure they got checked in, then leave them with food and our phone number to call us once they were going to be discharged from the hospital or if there were any problems. We were always super busy and short staffed so we probably couldn’t have stayed with them even if we wanted to but I can’t help but think about how alone and confused these women must have felt. It’d be like putting me in France, pregnant, alone, homeless, no money, no insurance, language I don’t understand at all and just having to trust the medical staff during one of the most physically trying acts a woman can sustain. Those poor women. One woman told us how she had her baby by herself on her bed because the nurses weren’t responding to her calls. Another young girl who was 19 told us that when she was released they told her they had given her a sterilization shot that lasted 3 months. She had not consented.

After going through labor, I cannot imagine what it must have been like for those women. I really don’t think that we could have stayed with them but at least I could have been more sympathetic to what they went through. Had I known then what I know now I would have also encouraged breastfeeding more, too.

Another thing that I am realizing now is how much I took my mom for granted. She always worked 50-60 hour weeks and me and my dad still expected her to get all our food for us and to do all the cleaning. Which she gladly did. My mom loves cleaning so she always did it. The food thing was harder. We usually ate fast food or take out but she would cook sometimes. Still even if it meant picking it up, we always expected my mom to bring food. I remember how angry I would get at her if she came home without food. Mostly because I was hungry and totally helpless. I didn’t know how to make anything other than Ritz crackers with cream cheese and jam.

After becoming a wife and mother, I realize how hard it is to be the one that is entirely in charge of every meal and cleaning. Kraft and I are trying to figure out how share these responsibilities more but with his schedule pretty erratic it makes sense that most of it fall to me, not to mention I don’t have a job. I now understand this responsibility that my mom had on top of working overtime. And she never complained. She never told us that we should get off our duffs and learn how to help with the food. She never told us that she was tired and needed us to help her. She just took our complaints and our ingratitude.

Sometimes I don’t give my mom the credit I should for being such a good mom. Thanks mom.

La Casa de Kraft

April 19, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

The Squeaker is doing a good job of keeping us on our toes. I want to do a better job chronicling this crazy ride that is parenthood so I decided to work on our family blog more. This blog will still be my primary blog but the other one will be stuff about our family and pics.

So enjoy: La Casa de Kraft

I Made Bread!

April 18, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image by sierravalleygirl via Flickr

Some friends of ours have recently started baking bread and have been kind enough to give us their extra loaves when they got ’em. This bread is absolutely deeeelicious and inspired me to want to make bread. I think I would have stayed wanting to do this and not actually doing it if it weren’t for a wonderful couple that Kraft knows that has 5 kids. One of the kids is having surgery this week (say a little prayer). The mom told me that the hardest meal that they have to get together is breakfast. So I am trying my hand at baking bread so maybe it will give them a hand come breakfast time.

This morning I started by making scones since they are pretty easy and require no yeast. They turned out good. This upped my confidence for actual yeast bread. Just 5 minutes ago I pulled my first batch of bread out of the oven. Two huge and weirdly shaped but pretty nonetheless honey wheat loaves. It is amazing to see dough rise.

I’m just really excited. We just tasted it and it wasn’t knock your socks off bread but it wasn’t bad like I was expecting it to be. Baking bread is kinda like making tamales, it’s pretty time intensive because of all the steps but it’s not hard and is pretty fun. I can’t wait to make a couple other kinds of bread tomorrow.

Makes you not ever want grocery store bread again.

Never Feed a Sleeping Baby

April 17, 2010 by Vanessa 1 Comment

Image via Wikipedia

This is another golden tip from some book that I read about baby sleep. Seems pretty common sense but you come to find that to a sleep deprived parent, few things are common sense. The Squeaker has been such a bad sleeper that when I figured out I could nurse her to sleep lying in bed, I thought I had hit the jackpot. Problem is now I can only put her to sleep like this. So when we’re all in bed and she starts to squirm and I know she is going to wake up, yes I feed her, and yes, sometimes she is asleep. So I do in fact feed a sleeping baby sometimes but I don’t do it as often as before. Now I wait and see if she can put her self to sleep. Anywho…

There are a few things that I am getting tired of:
1) People talking to me as if I’m stupid for co-sleeping with O.
2) Co-sleeping with O.

So, #1, I guess I run in some pretty hippy mom circles where co-sleeping is valued and seen as good parenting. But recently I have had a lot of encounters with people who don’t have kids and who talked to me as if I didn’t know the first thing about being a good mom. There is really no topic quite as controversial as how you get your baby to sleep. Every single mom feels guilty about the way they get to their kid to sleep. Including me. Every time I tell someone that O sleeps in bed with us I feel like I need to explain why. I feel like they are judging me and think that I am doing the wrong thing.

You know what? That’s it. I’m not going to feel bad anymore and other moms shouldn’t either. I have talked at length to moms about how they get their kids to sleep and every single one of them does something that they feel uncomfortable telling you about and feel like they have to justify it. Moms that have their kid sleep in their own crib in their own room and had to let their kid cry until putting themselves to sleep will say that there was no other way that worked and this was their last resort. Moms that sleep with their baby in bed with them will say the same thing. Moms that put their baby to sleep on their stomach will say the same thing. We don’t need to explain why we do this to anyone. The name of the game is survival. You do what puts your baby to sleep so that you can get just enough sleep not to go crazy.

I do believe that there are a lot of things that moms can do that make them bad moms. Here are some examples: put soda in your kid’s bottle, not giving your kid a chance to like veggies and always feeding them chicken nuggets and quesadillas, letting them play Halo and Grand Theft Auto, etc. But sleeping with your baby, putting your baby in a crib, or letting them sleep on their stomach is not one of them.

So next time I am talking to you and the topic of co-sleeping with O comes up don’t tell me that you think babies should sleep in cribs and don’t tell me that you know someone whose aunt’s hairdresser’s tax attorney’s dog groomer rolled over and smothered their baby after coming home drunk one night. Don’t want to hear it.

#2 I have been thinking for a while that it is time to transition O into a crib. Not because I want her out of our bed, but because she sleeps pretty well when she is asleep in our bed by herself but when I get in bed she wakes up about every hour. I think she would sleep better in her crib. And now that she is starting to be more mobile, I am worried about her being able to crawl off the bed. (It is a commonly known precaution that if your baby sleeps in bed with you you should put your mattress on the floor to prevent this from happening.) Thing is, I just have not built up the resolve that I need to fight this battle. I am very sleep deprived at the moment and the thought of rocking O to sleep for hours and then her waking up 5 minutes after I put her in her crib makes me want to cry. So I’m working on it. Not to mention, we have a queen size bed which was fine until she started getting so big and likes to sleep with her arms outstretched as if she was Jesus.

Just like all families, we are a work in progress.

Easter

April 15, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image by cobalt123 via Flickr

The Easter season is 50 days long so I don’t feel too bad writing this post so late.

I did not do a good job this Lent. The only Lenten resolution that I actually sorta stuck to was giving up sweets Mondays through Thursdays. Lame, I know. During my pregnancy I really indulged in sweets. Probably because I couldn’t drink. I got into a really bad habit of eating lots of cookies, candies, you name it. So for Lent I really wanted to start treating my body better and get back to a healthier me. I want to treat my body like the temple that God made it to be and not like a black hole for desserts.

Some of my other aspirations for Lent was to try to be less critical of Kraft and try to be a better, more patient mother. The Holy Spirit is really awesome. Me just aspiring to this was enough to let the Holy Spirit in and change me even though I myself wasn’t working too hard on changing. That is the amazing thing about Lent, even when I don’t really succeed at my end of the deal, God always holds up His end of the deal.

When Easter came I really felt that I had improved as a wife and a mother. O and I have really fallen into a good routine and I don’t feel her to be as burdensome as I used to feel. Of course I love my baby and don’t see her as a burden but on really hard days, the weight was pretty heavy. Those hard days that used to be pretty prevalent are much fewer now. I feel like I have finally hit my stride in motherhood. I can navigate around with O much better. I know how to grocery shop with her, walk around Target, do laundry, go for walks, do work around the house. Cooking with her is still extremely difficult but all in all I feel an ease to life now that was not there before. Thank you dear sweet Jesus.

As far as being a better wife. Well, I guess the real test would be to ask Kraft if he thinks I’ve become more patient and understanding but as far as I’m concerned, I think I have. Instead of getting mad at Kraft for not doing certain things, I’ve just tried to figure things out on my own. Kraft’s schedule is pretty busy and different day to day, so instead of depending on him to help me, I’ve just sucked it up and tried to figure it out on my own with O in tow. I realized I can’t just wait for her to be asleep or for Kraft to be watching her so that I can do everything that I need to do. I need to learn how to go about my day and my work with her at my side. I needed to realize that life can’t just stop because I have to hold a baby all day. Life has to continue and I have to figure it out. It’s still not perfect but it’s better.

Without even noticing or working too hard at it, the Holy Spirit has made me better this Lenten season. Thankfully God is much more faithful to our deals than I am.

Just a Note

April 15, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve known about Busted Halo for a while since it is powered by the Paulist Fathers and I’m married to Kraft. I even used some of their material for lesson plans last year. But I’ve been reading more of it recently. It is a really good website. They seem unafraid to tackle big issues and ask tough questions. They don’t dance around things and try to get straight answers.

During our recent house hunting, 2 out of the 8 homes that we have seen are being sold by gay couples that have adopted children and want to move to a bigger place. This has gotten me thinking about the Church and homosexuality. What do they have on their home page? An interview between a nun and her openly gay cousin who is living with his partner. It’s a good read.

Take a gander.

Tired and Happy

April 12, 2010 by Vanessa Leave a Comment

Man, I am pooped. It has been a whirlwind of a couple weeks. With house hunting and Easter and my college friends coming into town this past weekend, I am really tired. But really happy. (Well, the house hunting doesn’t make me happy. It makes me really anxious and I feel like if I am not constantly checking the MLS then the perfect house is slipping through our fingers.)
Easter was great but that’s another post.

On Wednesday, 3 of my best friends from college came to Austin to finally meet the Squeaker. I love those girls. We has so much fun in school. And I had forgotten how different all of us are from each other. We have the business oriented, tough as nails one; the quirky, always up for an adventure musician; the hippy, gluten/dairy free screenwriter; and me, the mom. I miss them so much. I love hanging out with them. We didn’t get to do tons while they were here because we had to work around O’s nap/sleeping schedule but we managed to get some good stuff in.

$1 margaritas at El Arroyo on Thursday were amazing. It was the first margarita I have had since last Dec 2008. It was cold and salty and heavenly. I only had one and it was about 5oz but it was awesome.

Then on Friday night Kraft was on O duty and me and the girls went dancing at the Broken Spoke. We had so much fun. I loooove dancing but get super nervous because I am not good at it. So I spend most of the night nervous that someone is going to ask me to dance but secretly hoping they will because I love it. This place was great because it was just a bunch of old guys that take you for a spin around the dance floor then walk you back to your seat. Such gentlemen. No sleazy guys trying to hit on you. It was fun. I definitely want to go again.

O loved them. She did not sleep very well because she loved hanging out with them. I tried to put her to sleep at her regular time but she did not want to sleep. She wanted to be with everyone else. It’s funny how metiche (busybody) she is. Tonight was the first night since Wednesday that she has fallen asleep before 11pm.

So this is why I haven’t blogged in a while. Sorry if this one is kind of rambly. I’m tired and not witty at the moment. I got some good topics in my head though that I want to get out. Hopefully those will come in the next couple days.

For now, I’m just really thankful for my community of friends.

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